Pellegrini unhappy despite Plzen win

Manuel Pellegrini was less than satisfied with the performance of his team in the 4-2 win over Viktoria Plzen.

The City boss was disappointed with the number of chances the away side were afforded over the course of the 90 minutes and has called on his team to defend with greater collective intensity.

City took the lead twice on either side of half-time, only to be pegged back immediately on both occasions and were made to wait for Negredo’s goal on 78 minutes to put the game beyond reach of Group D’s basement side.

“I’m satisfied because we won the game but we didn’t play well, we didn’t play with intensity,” Pellegrini declared.

“I think that we can attack and we can score four goals without giving the other team so many chances. One of the most important things to being an attacking team is knowing how to defend and I think on that front, we did very bad tonight.

“The whole team must know how to defend; we didn’t have the intensity or the pace to do it well tonight."

...Manuel Pellegrini...

"Plzen played a very good game tonight - I watched them against Bayern the other week and I was very impressed with their performance against such a strong team.

"I told my players before the game that they had players who could cause us problems if given time and space."

Most of Pellegrini’s post-match press conferences of recent times have tended to focus on the goalkeeper position.

The Chilean refused to reveal who he thinks will start in goal against Swansea on Sunday but he was full of praise for Hart’s performance after a string of fine saves from the England goalkeeper.

“I think that Joe Hart played very well, I didn’t expect him to have to work so much because out of all of the games in all of the competitions, this is the match that the other team had the most chances to score."

...Manuel Pellegrini...

“From tomorrow we will start thinking about the team for the next game.”

Pellegrini’s counterpart Pavel Vrba was pleased with his side’s performance and, in particular, the number of times they managed to work the City goalkeeper.

“My team showed it was very strong, we played very well but I am not happy with the result,” Vrba stated.

“We must remember that we played against a very strong team tonight, at half-time the statistics were very level and we managed to get into their penalty area on many occasions in the second half.

“Unfortunately, Joe Hart was very good at saving our chances but I think we played very well against a strong team.”